It would be naive to expect that humanity will never again commit crimes or that the pure establishment and the functioning of the International Criminal Court are in themselves sufficient for punishing all the perpetrators of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The trials before the ICC contribute, however, to discouraging potential perpetra-tors of these horrible crimes and make them realize that they can easily be brought to justice. Even their own state could conclude that solemn speeches about the determi-nation of the determi-national judiciary to punish militaries having committed war crimes are not enough if the results of the proceedings are not openly accessible to the public.
The main philosophy behind complementarity is that beside the importance of the principle ne bis in idem re, the real solution is punishment at the national level, an international legal commitment enshrined in several international conventions.
Today’s young lawyers or young military officers may easily become directly involved in regional armed conflicts when participating in different peacekeeping or peace-creating missions close to or far from their own country. They can encounter difficult situations where different elements of multinational forces are fighting together when their home countries are not forcibly bound by the Rome Statute: The conflict between the obligation to obey their superior’s orders and the individual criminal responsibility for having committed a war crime is an issue that no soldier, whether sub-officer, officer, or general, would ever like to experience.
The lawyer, as a police or border guard officer or as a state attorney, can easily meet in the near future a transmitted ICC warrant and the notification that according to some confidential information or common knowledge, an alleged perpetrator is probably on the territory of the given state. Judges working on the national level can meet such a litigation when the alleged perpetrator contests the legality of his arrest.
In order to be able to pass the right decision against or in favor, lawyers should be familiar with the basic rules of the Rome Statute and should also take into
121 Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, 2014.
122 Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, 2015.
consideration that all these rules are continously interpreted in line with a rather coherent judicial practice, which is, however, an evolving jurisprudence like that of the other international tribunals.
This is by far not an easy job, but it is feasible if truly challenging for an ambitious lawyer, state administrator, or attorney at law.
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